RMH-01 The Final Curtain

A lot of money for not having a printer friendly version.

Hello, I recently purchased this, Is there able to be a printer friendly version of these modules? The only available version would use a lot of ink.

This was an interesting adventure, but for me it really highlighted how poorly-suited 5E is for running investigative scenarios. The setting itself was delightful. Ermherst is an interesting little town populated with quirky (albeit very confusingly-named) NPCs. There are lots of opportunities for interesting freeform roleplay -- when you set aside your character sheet and just chat in-character. It's when you pick up your dice and get to the actual gameplay that things start to fall apart.

I haven't read the module, but I've played through it with my local AL group. This was my first Mist Hunters experience, and I’m sorry to say I’m not particularly inclined play more adventures in the series. It was a bold move for AL to break from the standard format of “you meet in a tavern, fight some random monsters, and call it a day”, and I applaud the authors' creativity. Investigating mysteries in a roleplaying game can be a ton of fun, and I was really hoping Mist Hunters could pull it off –...See more but unfortunately, I feel like the mystery aspect of this module really fell flat with how it was implemented mechanically.

Major spoilers below:
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The overall premise of the village being a sort of living re-enactment Renaissance Fair is a clever meta-aware setting. The intro with the NPCs "mistaking" one of the party for a long-lost relative set up a fantastic sense of unease. What the heck is going on in this weird little town? Unfortunately -- and what is ultimately so disappointing -- is that there's effectively nothing the players can do to find out! The overarching meta-mystery of the townsfolk being actors is set up via a series of jarring cutscenes featuring impossibly-fast, impossibly-sneaky teleporting stagehands that players can't interact with in any way. So much for player agency! You basically have to sit tight and go along with the ride until the Big Bad reveals everything in a literal on-stage monologue in the requisite end-of-module combat encounter. Such squandered potential! It's a neat idea, but the implementation means that players are handed a bunch of red herrings that they have no possible means of following up on.

And herein lies the fundamental problem of using a d20 dungeon crawl game engine to try to run a mystery. Playing through this adventure felt like a pixel-hunt, with the party spamming Investigation at every descriptive element the DM mentioned, rolling until someone got high enough that the DM could give us the clue that was necessary to proceed. (Unless there was a body, in which everyone rolled Medicine.) An experienced DM could work around this limitation by encouraging players to use alternate skills and/or ability scores, but by default it’s not a very engaging gameplay loop. It gets old fast when every scene plays out the same way:

“Does anything seem out of place on the desk?”
“Roll Investigation.”
“Are there any signs of a struggle?”
“Roll Investigation.”
"Are there any indications how this person died?"
"Roll Investigation. Or Medicine."

Talking to NPCs to try and gather information was incredibly frustrating, because it turns out *they're all actors*. So the Insight skill was completely useless. *Everyone* was acting evasive, and *everyone* was hiding their true intentions.

The final boss fight was confusing and overcomplicated. It made no sense that an NPC with so many caster levels and legendary actions was just sitting around doing nothing for most of the adventure, except for when they were clumsily murdering people the old-fashioned way off-screen. Apparently, there was also some sort of behind the scenes "tally score" the DM had to keep track of that influenced the boss fight. Again, there was no indication to players that we were interacting with this game mechanic until the DM revealed that this number determined how many wolves the boss teleported in or something. So it's really just pointless extra bookkeeping for the DM. The environmental effects that could occur on the stage had a lot of fun potential - but again, there was no way for players to clearly engage with them. The result was that the DM would say that something random happened on the stage, and it wasn't entirely clear why or how.

Finally, the quest hook itself is incredibly forced. You're following the trail of an NPC set up in the previous adventure - but the townsfolk won't tell you where they are unless you first get to the bottom of their little serial killer problem. Golly gee willickers! Turns out this NPC is entirely unconnected to the adventure in this module and has absolutely nothing to do with what's going on. (They left weeks ago. Sorry Mario, your McGuffin is in another Domain of Dread.) I was 100% on board with the premise of "investigators for hire sent by a worldhopping detective agency", so solving the "murder of the week" was motivation enough on its own. Shoehorning in these awkward bookends trying to tie the adventure into some meta-plot seems unnecessarily ham-handed. Again, so much squandered potential - since the NPC is a native of this domain, they would have known about the whole "living actors" situation and should have used that to their advantage in whatever scheme they're up to, dropping clues along the way that foreshadow (but aren’t essential to) the next module! Instead, we got some bland box text involving this NPC as prolog and epilog to the adventure.

All in all, this module is an interesting whodunnit with an evocative setting and engaging NPCS - but it's severely hobbled by the limitations and expectations of 5e D&D. If I were to run this adventure, I would keep the plot but use a game system like Gumshoe or Monster of the Week that facilitates investigation and gives player characters meaningful mechanics they can use to gather clues and engage with the story.

I am not allowed to review this, so I'll add my comments here instead.
I have nothing bad to say about this module. Well, it's tricky to keep track of the NPCs with similar names and letters, and their relationship to eachother but a drawing helps with that.
Now the good things. Everything else. Everything!

We played this - in person - immediately after playing RMHEP-01, and I - the DM - was blessed with the best party every! Picked the right player for the .. ahm .. significant part, and they caught on immediately! The rest of the party slowly caught wind of what was going on, and we had the most fun session I have had in years! Yes, this session saved my AL DMing!

Thank you, Greg (and Travis) for this chapter in the story. It is utterly hilarious - and slightly scary - to both play and DM :)

100 stars from me! Share them between the two of you! :)

The second in the Ravenloft: Mist Hunters series of adventures.

What is the first one?

How did we not learn our lesson from Season 8 and unprintable PDFs? Printer Friendly Versions do not take that much extra work and at 2X the price point should have a printer friendly option. What's even more sad about this is that we know that printer friendly editions exist because we know layout isn't done for convention premiers so they're using printer friendly versions. This is an obvious miss.

Further, I'm really confused, I thought character levels and adventure numbers were going to be in sync for every adventure in this campaign yet the first adventure is still written for APL 3?

So, my only grief with the RMH content so far: where are the maps? Specifically, where are the maps as digital artifacts in the bundles to use on virtual table tops?

WoTC is losing a store that runs AL every weekend because they added things that were not needed (over art and layout heavy) and way over priced the modules. These are 4 hour modules being run for strangers in a store or convention. $150 for the season plus a huge printing fee? No thank you.

There's a typo on page 12, it says "By the time the fire is put out, Zagia's body has been burned..." I believe it should say "Angeleia's body has been burned"

So far this looks like a lot of fun, hoping to run it this weekend

No ratings? No reviews? Surely it can't be that bad! :-) Please give some feedback purchasers!

PS: The "Mist Hunters’ Safety Kit article" anchor link doesn't actual link to any article.